221 221 Forbidden Barbecue
[All Companies set three shift rotations. Defense building, guard duty, and rest. I want this position dug in before night falls. There are adequate shovels for the Corvettes in the Landers.] Max ordered, wishing he had thought to bring a trenching machine on this mission.
It wasn’t that the Landers couldn’t create one from the raw materials that they brought, but that material would be needed very soon to start repairing damaged Mecha. For that same reason, they wouldn’t build anything too elaborate, at least not yet. Most of what they found here in the core of the infestation was swarm and warriors, with none of the Heavy Mecha-sized behemoths in sight.
Not that they wouldn’t be there eventually, but not today.
For now, the plan was to transport the material removed from the trenches to the landers, using the Materials Printers to create huge rockcrete blocks that would create the primary wall around their position. Though not as hard as armor, the reinforced concrete would stand up to a large amount of abuse, and could easily be constructed from the loose soil and rocks that were removed from a trench.
Each of them was a standardized two meters high and thick by four meters long, easily moved by a Crusader Class Mecha, but they would securely interlock when stacked, to create a durable defense.
The Battalion got on the job as quickly as they could, knowing that the better they did now, the less they would suffer later, once the Klem realized that they had intruders inside their territory. The likely wouldn’t take more than a few hours, so the Pilots were wearing themselves out, digging the trench and hauling the blocks back to place inside the line.
Once that was finished, a liquid polymer would be created and poured into the trench, making it more difficult for the Klem to tunnel under the wall.
[Colonel Max, we have a wave of Klem warriors approaching from all directions.] Major Ivanov, Commander of the First Company called, and Max immediately moved into a position where he could defend the fourth quadrant, leaving the Super Heavy Mecha evenly spaced.
[Avoid projectile usage during the first wave. They are still too scattered, and munitions are limited.] Max ordered, waiting for the Klem to get within an optimal range for the Ion Bombard Arrays and light up his targeting skills firing solutions.
At five thousand meters, targeting squares began to fill his screen, and Max opened fire over the heads of the Mecha who were working frantically to finish up the walls.
The other three opened fire a few seconds later, bringing the advance to a halt as the Klem stopped to reorganize outside the expected range of the Kepler weapons. They weren’t truly sentient, but they had a very good memory, and they would stop at that point in the future, building up their force density for an attack, but leaving themselves vulnerable to the Mass Drivers on the X137 Command Units.
For two uneasy hours, more and more Klem gathered in a ring six kilometers away from the Kepler position, and the defensive wall was completed, with the trenches lined in fast curing polymer.
[Any signs of Behemoths?] Max asked, making sure nobody had seen anything that he hadn’t.
[Negative, we have a high density of warriors but nothing larger yet.] All the units reported the same, and Max watched as the flow of Klem into the area slowed to a trickle.
They would only migrate so far to deal with a threat, and it looked like they had already assembled all the forces that they thought would be necessary.
“Do you want me to send out the scouting drones?” Nico asked, showing him their supply of ten weaponless drones on the secondary view screen.
“No, I think the first attack should be straightforward enough that we won’t need to look for additional threats. Save them for when things start looking suspicious.” Max disagreed, then sent out the order to begin the attack.
[Full Area Bombard with the Mass Drivers. Start in the back of the cluster and roll back toward the base in 3, 2, 1.]
The air filled with the thunder of artillery, and explosions lit up the sky in the distance, slowly closing in on them. The Klem quickly realized the threat that was coming from behind them and began their charge on the First Battalion’s position.
When the front ranks reached three kilometers they were at a comfortable distance for the Ion Destroyers on the Crusader Class Mecha, and bursts of white energy joined the red and yellow explosions. The Klem ranks were starting to get thin in a hurry, as the warriors were unable to survive a hit from the Heavy Mecha, but that didn’t slow them. At two thousand meters, the Corvette Class Mecha joined the fusillade and the attack nearly vanished under the barrage of energy blasts.
[Cease Artillery. Save ammunition for the next wave.] Max ordered and the torturous thunder of four Super Heavy Mecha ceased in an instant.
The silence was deafening, leaving a lingering ring in the ears, despite the sound dampening of the Mecha, but still, the last remnants of the attack rushed for the walls, only to be met with the Fusion Flamers of the X109 Fast Attack Crusaders just before they could reach the trenches.
The smell of burning chitin filled the air, filtered from the Pilot’s noses by the rebreather systems of the Mecha, but the lingering haze of burning bodies and vegetation remained in the air, hiding the base camp from sight to anything more than a kilometer away.
[First Full engagement reported. First Battalion has eliminated a Klem Warrior wave with a zero failure rate. Data is being sent to the analysis department.] Regiment Commander General Yaakov reported from his position in the observation bays of Abraham Kepler, forwarding the data through to the scientists.
“See, he will be fine. They wiped out the first wave before it even reached their defenses. They can handle this.” Sister Lilith assured Moonie, who had been in a state of mild panic ever since the Mecha dropped.
She thought she was ready for this, but knowing Max was in Combat and analyzing the data from his battles was proving harder on the nerves than the small blonde researcher had anticipated.